In 2009, Kerry McPhail descended Jacques Cousteau-style towards the Axial Volcano, inside the cramped, 30-year-old little submarine DSV Alvin, with a pilot and another scientist. Three hundred miles off the coast of Oregon, they were collecting tubeworms, bacterial mats and bivalves living near a deep sea volcanic…

For the past three weeks, biologists aboard the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer have been investigating marine sanctuaries in the American Samoan region of the Pacific. They’ve found a smattering of weird and dazzling creatures, reminding us just how little we know about life at the bottom of the ocean.

As currents shift in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, they bring an abundance of nutrients and plankton to the region, luring predators of all sizes. Swarms of anchoveta arrive first for an easy meal, but soon find themselves having to come up with unique ways to fend off larger predators like sharks and tuna. The…

As climate change worsens around the world, its effects are increasingly being observed. One notable effect has been the disappearance of five Solomon Islands in the West Pacific due to rising sea levels.

It was an uncharacteristically quiet hurricane season in the Atlantic, but the same cannot be said for the eastern Pacific and central Pacific basins, which got absolutely hammered this year. New maps by NASA and Unisys Weather show the extent of this year’s storm season.

The Spratly islands are not a natural spot for a layover. They are isolated—tiny, shallow islands spread out over a huge chunk of the South China Sea. So why are so many nations rushing to construct airline runways and other infrastructure there?

For the past two years, climate scientists have tracked a large and circular patch of unusually warm water off the Northeast U.S. Pacific Coast that doesn't seem to want to go away. Dubbed "the blob", it has now been linked to the strange weather recently experienced across North America.

The Pacific Ocean is very, very big. Airplanes are big, too—but, compared to the Pacific Ocean, they are almost comically small. So, as rescuers finish up a week of searching unsuccessfully for Malaysia Air Flight 370, it's worth taking a second to marvel at what an impossible a task it is to find one little plane in…

Back in November, volcanic activity along the western edge of the Pacific "Ring of Fire" gave rise to a tiny new island in Japanese territory. According to new reports, the island — named Niijima — is still erupting and growing.

The effects of global warming have reached even the ocean deep. New analyses – published in the latest issue of Science – reveal that water temperatures a kilometer below the surface of the Pacific Ocean have warmed 15 times faster in the last 60 years than at any time in the last 10,000. [New Scientist]

The land bridge that once connected North America and Asia rose from the seas 80,000 years ago. And at the same time, North America's climate began experiencing violent climate swings, with average temperatures shifting as much as ten degrees every decade.

In the summer of 1997, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration picked up a sound from deep beneath the Pacific. The sound seemed to come from an animal far larger than any we've ever seen. This was the Bloop.

About 9,000 years ago, the Fuzhou Basin in southeastern China fell victim to rising sea levels, pushing underwater the marshy lands needed for rice farming. The marooned people there became seafarers, which eventually led to the colonization of Taiwan.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in what is now the Bahamas, changing the world forever. But was he first non-indigenous person to reach the Americas? Vikings got there before him, and possibly Polynesians too...and those are just the sane theories.

The resourceful Dutch want to turn the Pacific Garbage Patch into a tropical destination. The idea is to recycle the plastic waste floating in our oceans into building materials for an habitable, self-sustaining island.

After what feels like years of concept renders and photos of the hairy David de Rothschild accompanying gushing magazine pieces about his plastic bottle boat, the Plastiki will set sail this month across the Pacific Ocean.